


little slice of heaven

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Doctor's Wife vibes but I made it worse, Drama, Gen, One-Shot, fanzine prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 20:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: Some traps are better made than others.





	little slice of heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece I did in response to this week's prompt from the lovely folks running @thirteenfanzine, which I'm so excited to be taking part in - this week the prompt was 'old friends' and to be fair I only sorta touched on it but you know? We're going with this. Whatever this is. (also shoutout to the lovely @jolivira, who wanted Susan) (......I'm so sorry?)
> 
> It's so late and my eyeballs hurt. Messy and quick, but that's what's fun about prompts, I think. Thanks so much for reading and I'd love to know what you thought!

“A museum?”

Graham pressed his lips together to hide a smile as Ryan tried - and failed - to conceal the disappointment in his voice.

The Doctor’s head popped around the console, eyebrows fraught with exaggerated offense. She gave as good as she got, that one - if you knew how to look, at least.

“What’s wrong with a good old museum?” she demanded, but her eyes were glittering with mischief. “History, culture, great works of art - ”

Ryan crossed his arms, unmoved. “Great dusty bits that no one will let you touch, you mean.”

She pulled a lever with gusto.

“You’ve never been to a museum with me,” she said, grinning. “Ryan Sinclair, do you want to know the best part about going to museums?” She leaned over the console, eyebrows raised. “ _Ignoring all the signs_. Go on, then,” she said, as the TARDIS landed with a heaving shudder. “Off you pop, go have a look. Only knock things over if you think they might have been stolen.”

She shooed Yaz and Ryan out of the TARDIS, shaking her head fondly.

“Aren’t you coming, Doc?” Graham paused at the doors. “What’s the name of this place anyway?” He considered, watching her hands move delicately over the controls. “And why a museum, all of a sudden? I don’t mind them myself, but I think you and Ryan tend to be of similar minds about these sorts of things. Bit slow, innit?”

Her hands paused as she thought, but only for a moment. Quick thinker.

“Oh, alright,” she admitted, not that he’d pressed much. A smile brightened her face, a real one, quick and warm like sunlight. Quieter than those grins she liked to wear. “Come here and have a look.”

He joined her at the console, paused at her shoulder to gaze up into one of its many screens.

“It’s all circles to me, Doc,” he said, frowning at the elegant spirals spat across the screen. It was a script, he assumed, but not one the TARDIS ever bothered to translate. Not one he had even the slightest clue how to decipher. But it suited her, he thought. The Doc. All circles with no start and no end.

“The TARDIS intercepted a signal while we were in the vortex,” she explained, and her voice was soft, now. Quietly hopeful, to his ears. “A - a psychic message, transmitted out across time and space. Amplified, so any TARDIS within range - ”

She cut herself off, exhaling.

“It’s the sort of technology only my people could use,” she said, swallowing back her excitement. “And that’s not even the best part, ‘cos listen - ”

Her hand went to a button below the screen and a voice cut through the air, young, feminine.

“ _Grandfather_ ,” it said. “ _Grandfather_.”

The Doctor grinned, and she span on her heel, coat twisting with the movement, before turning it off.

Graham frowned in confusion. “I - I don’t - ” His frown deepened, hands raising. “Are you tellin’ me - ”

Her face dropped slightly. “I told you, I can change my face. I was a bloke before, remember?”

“No, no, I remember, I just - ” His hands fell to his sides, and he remembered standing on those steps, weeks ago, wind sharp in his nose, still soaked in grief. “You said your family were gone.”

“They were.” She grinned again, real and ragged at the edges. Frayed with hope. “Until now.”

He felt a smile tug at his own lips. “Then that’s wonderful, Doc.” The screen blinked, and he turned to look at it. “She’s here in the museum, then? Your granddaughter?” Oh, and wasn’t that a strange thought. They’d had more in common than he’d thought, all this time, though no one would ever believe it. The Doctor looked barely a hair past thirty.

He wondered how old she was, really. They’d never bothered to ask, any of them. He supposed now wasn’t quite the moment.

She tapped the screen fondly. “According to this. Who knows why, but - I suppose I’ll find out.” That smile was stuck there now. Bewildered and joyful, like she couldn’t believe her luck. “It’s a private collection. Ajax Aggrieved’s Museum of Natural Wonders. Never been. Never heard of it at all, actually. But my granddaughter, she liked - _likes_ ,” and her face split open into a grin again, “history, culture. Humans. She even married one.” She shook her head, like the whole affair was still a bit beyond her, even now, but the smile stayed. “Shall we?”

“Count me in,” he said, following her out the doors. “Any granddaughter of yours has got to be at least half as wonderful as you are.”

“Ooh, flattery,” she said, face scrunching as she considered it. “That’s new. I’ll give it ten points.”

“Only ten?”

“Fifteen at a push. Let’s go!”

They stepped out into dim lighting, the smell of polished wood and old stone. The floors shone underneath Graham’s feet. The air was still.

Perfect museum vibe. Peaceful. But it was a bit -

“I think you’ve landed us on a Sunday,” Yaz pointed out, circling back to them. “It’s deserted.”

“Even better,” the Doctor said, eyes wandering. “Now there’s really no one to stop you from poking all the statues on the nose.”

Yaz frowned slightly at the thought, as Ryan came back around to meet them, approaching from a side wing.

“This place is proper creepy,” he marvelled. “Come have a look what’s over here.” He gestured in the direction he’d come from, and they trailed behind dutifully, past elegantly displayed artefacts and trinkets, imprisoned in glass. Nothing he recognized.

Ryan brought them eventually to a statue, looming tall above them. A horned figure protruding from a sheet of stone. Cased in it, it half looked like. Hands raised, clawed fingers grasping.

“Never seen art like that before,” Graham said quietly, unnerved despite himself.

The Doctor leaned forward to read the information card beside it and frowned.

“That’s because it’s not art,” she said, tilting her head up at the figure. Her hair glinted in the dull, yellow light. “That’s a person in there. Or it was a person. An Utaxi.” She drew back. Unsettled, Graham thought. Unhappy. “I don’t - ”

But she frowned, suddenly. Breathed in sharply. Pressed her lips together grimly and turned from them, towards the exhibit in the middle of the room they’d entered.

“What?” Yaz asked, concerned. Eyeing the poor sod cased in stone with unease, stepping closer to the Doctor. “What is it?”

“A relic,” she said, very softly. She was gazing down into the glass exhibit case, expressionless. “Piece of a weapon, actually. From a very old war.”

He watched her think, for another moment. Watched the gears turn behind those impossible eyes, and when she turned to them again she was wearing a smile.

“Gang. Fam,” she said, all awkward, joyful sheepishness. “Bit embarrassing. Forgot my sonic back in the TARDIS and I’d like to have a look around with it. Would you mind?”

Ryan frowned. “What, all three of us?”

“Well, I don’t know where I’ve put it,” she said, like it were obvious. “Could be in another coat, could be underneath the console, I can’t remember. Three of you will go faster. I’ll stay close by, promise. Investigatin’ to do. No time like the present.”

“Brave words from a time traveller,” Yaz said, looking half exasperated. Graham wasn’t sure whether she was buying it or not. She was smart as a whip, that girl, bright as they came. But she liked the world to be a certain way. “Take my mobile at least, will you?” She pressed it into her hand without waiting for an answer.

And Ryan, bless him, had been raised to believe the best in people. Always.

“Alright,” he said, turning on his heel. “You probably left it by the pool again, I keep tellin’ you - ”

Graham would never fault him that.

“Alright, cockle?” he asked, turning, about to follow. “What sort of place is this?”

“Oh,” she waved a hand. “Probably nothing to worry about. Sure there’s an explanation. I’ll keep looking.” She smiled at him again, but it was tight. Strained. “Happy hunting.”

 _You too_ , he thought privately, but didn’t say. Only nodded, once, and took off after the others, shoes squeaking against the floors. He’d have to watch that.

As they reached the TARDIS doors, he paused and slapped his coat pockets with his palms, feigning a search for something that wasn’t there. He’d learnt from the best, after all.

“Oh, bugger all,” he said. “Think I dropped my mobile back in that other room.”

Ryan twisted his head to look at him. “Really?” he demanded. “Seriously, Grandad.”

“Don’t look at me like that, I’ll be back in a jiff. No reason you can’t start lookin’ without me.”

“Just doesn’t want the TARDIS to toss him into the pool again,” he heard Ryan mutter to Yaz as they disappeared behind blue doors. They closed with a quiet creak, but it echoed in the empty hall. Sang off the walls, dissonant.

He followed their footsteps back to the stone figure, walking carefully, quietly, so his shoes didn’t squeak. It wasn’t a big place, wherever they were. Long corridors to the right shot off into darkness and heavy wooden doors, but to the left were more open halls, arching into each other. Wreathed in shadows at the sides that he clung to, cautious, until he’d wandered right to where the Doctor was.

This hall was different than the others. Smaller, tighter. Large statues and bookshelves that went all the way to the ceiling lined the walls, cast darkness thick enough to hide in, and he crept in carefully, quietly, until he could wedge himself behind a statue. He could see the Doctor’s face in profile from here. He watched, squirreled away, as she approached some sort of hologram in the middle of the room. A databank, maybe. Some sort of - spacey computer. Who knew, he was rubbish at the whole thing.

An oddly shaped sphere hung suspended far above the databank, almost golfball-like in its dimensions, dimpled and endless and all sort of - fractal. It looked like it should shimmer, but it didn’t.

“Oh, Missy,” he heard the Doctor whisper, but it wasn’t fond. It was something sharper, something - older. “You never could look after your toys. And look who’s got their hands on it, now.”

“Do you like it?”

A figure emerged from the shadows, from the corridor to her left.

“It’s insulting,” she said, barely even blinking in acknowledgement. Her eyes flicked to the figure, a tall, elegantly dressed man. Velvet suit, cravat. Bit too posh, Graham thought, eyes narrowing. Bit too much.

“You’re the curator here, I assume,” the Doctor said, still gazing up at the floating golfball. She hadn’t noticed Graham yet, but he wasn’t sure she was quite in the spot to, at the moment. Her eyes were very far away. Her voice was very soft. “Ajax Aggrieved.”

“A pleasure,” the man said, and he had the sort of face, Graham thought, souring to him, that looked as though he thought he was already winning.

The Doctor finally turned to him. “Is it?”

“I suppose it depends on your point of view. Have you found what you’re looking for?”

Her jaw clenched. She loosened it, with effort.

“My granddaughter isn’t here,” she said quietly.

Ajax lowered his head in acknowledgment, his glassy eyes dull and pitiless. “Correct.”

The Doctor was only very still.

“She died in the Time War,” she said, and Graham caught the shine in her eyes, stifled movement in her hands, deliberately loose. So perfectly, deliberately still. She swallowed painfully. “They conscripted her and she died on the front lines. Just like I thought.”

“Correct.”

She exhaled, and Graham watched her shoulders slump, watched a terrible, ancient despair flood her eyes, watched her reel it back in, piece by piece until it was still and sharp like the rest of her.

“You’re a collector,” she said, strained. Still quiet. “And an engineer, clearly. This,” and she gestured derisively at the holographic database in front of her, “is your pathetic attempt at mimicking Time Lord technology. A slice of the Matrix, patched together from scavenged parts. Inelegant. Poorly designed.” And now her lip did curl briefly into a sneer that Graham had never seen before, and never wanted to again. “That was just a piece of her that I caught. An echo, a psychic imprint. Like breath on glass.”

He was motionless, immobile. Cold. “Correct.

“Which means,” she breathed, “that this is a trap.”

“Correct.”

“The works, I assume. Guards at all the exits, total surveillance, no chance of escape.” Clipped, resigned. “When I try to run, you’ll stun me and throw me in a pretty glass prison for all eternity. Show me off to whoever pays you the most.”

He did smile now, thinly. “Correct.”

She smiled at him in return, but it wasn’t kind. Her eyes had gone flat.

“But you won’t hurt me. You like your pieces,” she curled her lip again, delicately, “ _intact_.” She swept forward, closer to the database, plunging her hand into it unashamedly, grinning at the way he balked. She reached and a twist of her fingers opened the bank, sent swirling blue into the air around her.

“Oh, look at that. Quite the assortment you’ve got catalogued here.” Her grin fell. “Hundreds of species. Rare, exotic, extinct. And you thought you’d quite like the last of the Time Lords for your collection,” she breathed. “Joke’s on you, though,” she went on, and her voice was terribly soft as she scrolled through the database, the sterile blue light of it catching coolly in her hair. “Gallifrey’s back. Out of your primitive reach, but I’m hardly the novelty you think I am anymore.” She paused, fingers withdrawing from the hologram as she brought up another program. They were shaking, but her voice was still soft. Fragile and wonder-filled. “Look at all the minds you have banked in here. The Rani, the Master. The Corsair - oh, but he was trapped himself, centuries ago.” Her breath caught. “Romana, of course. You have my brother as well, though I suppose you might not have known it.” She lowered her hand. Her eyes were still very flat. “Old friends. Whispers from the long dead.”

She laughed, then, mirthless. Graham felt the back of his neck prickle.

“Oh, but that’s the thing about hope,” she said as the laugh tapered off, still so calm, still so quiet. “It so abides. Until it doesn’t. I should know better by now, I really should.”

“Doctor.” Ajax stepped forward, out of the darkness. Graham slid further back into it, heart pounding. Joints aching with fear, like they always did, in the dark, in the cold. He was getting too old for this.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, and there was nothing in her face left that he recognized. “No, no, no, the Doctor is out. You’re stuck with me now.” A blink, and her pale face was framed in shadow as the database went into standby. Cheekbones sharp, eyes cold and furious. Alien. “Run.”

“This is my museum,” he said coldly, though Graham caught a flicker of what might have been trepidation in the working of his jaw. “You’re at my mercy, here.”

The Doctor stepped away from the database and raised the sonic in the air. It buzzed, high-pitched and painful, until the database sparked and sputtered back awake, until the lights around them flickered and extinguished. They were left in its blue glow, eerie and cold.

“Seems you’re dealing with a bit of a power outage. Surveillance down. Security’s toast. That’s what you get for relying on automation.” She flipped the sonic in her hand and caught it. “While I was in your systems I also took the liberty of releasing all your specimens. I can’t imagine they’ll be too happy with you, to be perfectly honest.” Ajax’s face flickered again, the blood draining from it slowly.

“You can’t,” he whispered.

“Did you not hear me?” the Doctor asked, stalking forward a step, teeth glinting as she smiled. The whites of her eyes caught the light. She stilled, like a snake about to strike. “I said I’d like for you to run.”

Ajax must have been less stupid than he seemed, Graham thought, watching the other man back away slowly, hands raising, stumbling back into the dark, away from the dim glow. His own heart was hammering in his ears, fear sickly sweet up his throat. Grief that wasn’t his thick and ashy behind his teeth.

“ _Run_ ,” she snarled loudly, teeth bared, lunging, knuckles white around the sonic, and in that moment Graham had no doubt that it was a weapon and not a tool. Ajax tripped and scrambled his way down the darkened corridor, the sound of his footsteps echoing, loud, lonely. She stood there, left behind, breaths high and tight and fast, and she was giving him a head start, Graham thought. Counting down, silently. She wanted a chase.

He lunged out of the shadows before she could get to the bottom, reaching.

“ _Doc_ ,” he said. Arms stretched out in front of him like some sort of idiot, like someone who could actually stop her. He brought them closer to his chest, hesitant.

She closed her eyes, dismayed.

“Thought I heard breathin’,” she said, still soft enough to be suspicious. “What happened to ‘go back to the TARDIS’? I’ll be having those ten points back.”

But her eyes left him to track back down the corridor, distracted.

“Let him go,” he said, before he could think about it too much. “Doctor, you let him go.”

All of her was still too flat. Eyes, lips, voice. Like all the pieces that made her herself had been sucked out.

“Or what?”

But she’d said it best herself, hadn’t she.  _The Doctor is out_.

He laughed, then. “Or what? What am I gonna do, stop you? I’m an old man, ain’t I.” He took a step closer, nearer to the eerie blue. It glinted off the floors, made the polished wood look cold and sleek. “I’ve only ever lost a wife. Both of ‘em, in a way. Never a child, or a grandchild. Something tells me you’ve lost all three. I can’t - tell you what to do, or what to think, but you - you helped me, once.” Closer, closer, until he was within reaching distance. Close enough to touch, but he didn’t. “Let me help you,” he said. “Let me help you stop.”

“Graham,” she said, and it was still too quiet, still too flat, repressed and stifled because she never wore it out, did she, she kept it all trapped behind that grin. “Graham, he - ”

“I know what he did,” he said. “I saw what he did. And it was cruel, and he’s a monster. Let the monsters have ‘im.”

A frown flickered across her face. Warring with that hunger in her eyes, that sticky, awful malice. “The monsters,” she said. “ _Oh_.” She glanced down the corridor again, and there were sounds in the distance now, echoing snarls. A distant wail, primal. Dissonant.

“Oh, come on,” he begged, the words rough against his throat, cragged and sharp. “Have your justice, but keep your hands clean, ain’t that how this works? Ain’t that how you work? Just listen. All those poor creatures you’ve set loose’ll rip him up just as well as you could.”

She reeled away from him, breathing in sharply. A hand on her hip, for comfort, for stability, while the other swiped down her face. “Oh,” she whispered, shaking. Face hidden. Coming back to herself in fits and starts. “Oh, you’re right. I should save him. What have I - I should - ”

“That’s not what I said.” He stepped forward, knees aching. “And you know it.”

“It’s not any better,” she said, the twist of her mouth pained. “Haven’t I taught you that much? It’s not any better.”

“Isn’t it?”

She swallowed, painful. Eyes dragged, inevitably, back to the corridor. “He scavenged from our dead. From old friends of mine. Traipsed through old battle-grounds and tore apart our ships. He took a piece of our heaven,” she said, and it was sharp, miserable, “and he made it into a  _trap_.”

“You don’t have to convince me, Doc. I saw the whole thing.”

“ _No_ ,” she said, and there was a hint of her, there, of that resolute morality he’d seen on Ranskoor Av Kolos, wavering, pulled taught like a string. Slotted back into place, but it didn’t fit quite right. Maybe it never had to begin with. “No, but I should still - I have to save him.”

She breathed harshly for a minute, torn between fury and righteousness. Still stuck between that hungry malice and the rules she’d built around herself. And they were for her, weren’t they, he realized slowly, shudderingly.

Not just for people like him. Rules to keep the Doctor in.

Her shoulders sagged.

“I left her,” she said. Quiet, only there were still screams in the distance, great heaving wails, muted by the panelled walls. “My granddaughter. I abandoned her. On Earth, in the 22nd century, with some human she’d only known for half a minute, I - ”

She swiped angrily at her eyes.

“Thought she’d have a better life, there. Traipsing about with an old man and a box, that’s no life for a young girl, it wasn’t - she was losing herself. But she would never have left me. So I left her instead. And I said I’d be back, but I - ” She clenched her jaw, eyes watery, furious. With herself, Graham thought. “I never even got to say goodbye. I - ”

Her lips twisted, and she turned back to the databank. Plunged her hand into it until that echoing, dissonant voice played scratchily again.

“ _Grandfather_ ,” it said. Breath on glass. “ _Grandfather_.”

Graham felt his stomach twist. The eerie blue crept at the Doctor’s face, washed her cold and shadowy. And sad, he thought. Though you’d easily miss it if you focused on the shadows.

He took the sleeve of her coat, carefully. Held it like he would a hand, so there’d be pressure there. Comfort without touch. She was like a raw nerve, like this. Standing close made the hair on his arms stand on end. Made his brain feel scratchy, like the static on the telly.

“The kids are back in the TARDIS,” he said. “No one’s watching.”

“No excuse,” she whispered, but there was want in her face.

There’d been a cruelty here. Injustice, sour and crackling. But he’d learnt the hard way how much trouble it could be, to try to sort it yourself. The Doctor had shown him the better way. Hands free, hands clean. Bloodless. From a certain point of view, anyway.

Sometimes you had to leave it to the universe. Sometimes you had to walk away.

Sometimes that was just as good.

“No one here but us monsters,” he said, tugging at her sleeve, eerie blue pulling at them both. “Let’s leave them behind. Shall we?”


End file.
